Onnit Labs

Tuesday 19 March 2013

EA Apologizes for SimCity





Feeling sore about the SimCity debacle? A free game is just what you need!







It came as a significant surprise to the industry, when EA's SimCity experienced server and connection issues for their online-only game. LOL, I kid of course. Nobody thought that online-only would be a good move for what is widely considered to be a single player game, look back at the launch of Diablo 3. A great single player game that was flooded with online issues, the inability to play offline causing outrage with fans. It seems that EA did not learn from Blizzards mistake in time, and are now suffering the consequences.

 Fans were disappointed with EA's initial response to the issue, merely claiming that the game does not function without constant Internet connection, and that an always connected multiplayer SimCity game is the vision that they had from the start, not the isolated single city experience that fans would be used to. Now, after a modder has proven that offline mode can be managed quite simply, Maxis and EA are attempting to rectify the issue.

Lucy Bradshaw, EA's general manager for Maxis, has released an apology via the company's blog, explaining the reason for needing to be online and addressing the issue formally.

"At Maxis, our studio values dictate that we innovate and create something that is quirky, complex and challenging. Sometimes this bites us in the butt, but our servers are green and we're seeing record numbers of players all online and having a great time."

Bradshaw went on to explain that not having enough server capacity was "dumb" but EA has now increased its server size by 120%. The number of disrupted experiences has actually dropped by roughly 80%, so it should be smooth sailing for players for now.

To make it up to the players that spent their money on the game prior to launch, and were unable to play the game initially as advertised, EA has announced that anyone who registers the game before the 25th of March can choose an Origin game from a list of titles to download for free. That list being;


Battlefield 3
Bejewelled 3
Dead Space 3
Mass Effect 3
Medal of Honor Warfighter
Need for Speed Most Wanted
Plants VS Zombies
SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition.


Is the gesture too little to late? Many of these games don't retail for much anymore, especially those with any DLC that have been released since they launched, and EA are avoiding many costs and distribution charges by issuing the games through their own Origin server. Or is the gesture enough to quell your gamer rage? Either way, we can only hope that future publishers take note of this spectacle, and that future releases will either have the capacity to handle an always-online game, or that they will abolish the concept completely.

-Welsh 19/03/13

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